CEO and Founder, qBotica Inc, a robotic process automation startup based in Arizona.

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Two decades ago, who would have thought that a machine could play a song with our mere utterance of some words or set up an alarm for us without us moving a finger! But here we are, living out what seemed like an impossibility not too long ago. The stunning force behind such smart and interactive machines is artificial intelligence.

As of 2018, artificial intelligence (AI) has already made significant inroads in multiple industries and has inarguably become an indispensable part of the business world. Many enterprises are taking robotic process automation or intelligent automation (the brainy version of RPA) as the first step toward adopting artificial intelligence. While we really don’t want to be pundits providing prophecies, here are six predictions to watch out for in regard to intelligent automation in 2019:

• Prediction No. 1: Some jobs will be lost, but more will be created by intelligent automation.

Over the years, many industry experts have tracked the impact of intelligent automation. It has been a preconceived notion that AI will negatively impact existing jobs.But by looking at a report from Gartner, which predicts that AI will create more jobs (2.3 million) than it will eliminate (1.8 million) by 2020,as well as a 2018 Accenture study, which notes how machines will actually help humans get more work done, it can be concluded that the total number of jobs lost to intelligent automation will be lesser than what it will create in the future. Automation will lead to the creation of new work opportunities, but with some readjustment by the workforce. Such readjustments have been constant in our evolution from paper-based desk work to computerization and, similarly, in factories where roles have changed due to the incorporation of technology.

In 2019, the RPA market will reach a value of $ 2.3 billion, according to HfS Research. As of recent times, RPA and AI have been treated distinctively by tech firms, but 2019 will witness a thrilling combination of the two with the rise of cognitive automation. In the process, this amalgamation will uncover even more use cases in the business-to-business world.

Until now, the companies that have adopted RPA have been enterprise-sized businesses. But as we move forward into 2019, many smaller firms will be seen implementing RPA and similar tools at a much higher rate, a prediction that Gartner mentioned in a November press release this past year: "Gartner estimates that 60% of organizations with a revenue of more than $1 billion will have deployed RPA tools by the end of the year." And in its Forecast Snapshot report of RPA (paywall), the research firm notes that "this rapid adoption is anticipated in organizations of all sizes.”

RPA vendors now will be targeting many small businesses and not just enterprise businesses. As a result, I believe the share of small and medium-scale enterprises trying or piloting RPA will grow aggressively this year.

• Prediction No. 4: There will be a stiff competition among organizations to use AI to acquire talent.

AI is already being used to acquire talent. However, with the tech talent gap widening and several major industries set to face major talent shortages by 2030, it seems clear that the conventional recruiting techniques have failed, which should cause firms to start relying on AI more to hire the right individuals. In 2019, I think we can expect to see more companies tackling this problem by applying AI to recruitment -- and job seekers may even have to be prepared to be interviewed by Alexa, Siri or Cortana.

• Prediction No. 5: RPA products will focus on more aspects of data.

This means RPA will begin to look at more than just unstructured data but everything around data, including data migration, data conversion and data integration.

Enterprises are slowly seeing the power of RPA and are leveraging it for more than just business rules and business processes run using standard operating procedures (SOPs) but are also seeing it as an alternative to data extraction and transformation technologies such as ETL (extract, transform, load). Vendors will also enhance the traditional data collection methods to include more natural language processing (NLP) and AI algorithms to process unstructured information quicker, enabling organizations to make better business decisions, instantly saving valuable time and resources.

• Prediction No. 6: The role of the CIO will further be challenged as the lines between CTOs, CIOs and the upcoming role of the CDOs will begin to blur.

Typically, CIOs manage three major facets of the enterprise: business applications delivery and support, infrastructure management, and desktop operations and employee productivity technology management. With the advent of the cloud, the infrastructure responsibilities are quickly transitioning to third parties, making that responsibility almost redundant. To add to that, productivity products are also moving to the cloud, placing extreme pressure on CIOs to actively look for an alternative to traditional business delivery platforms such as Java and .Net stacks. Intelligent automation can provide them that alternative and act as the ecosystem integrator.

These are just some predictions of how the intelligent automation world will evolve in the coming year and how it will continue to reshape the business world. It is evident that AI and RPA will go full-throttle in the next few years and help in establishing many industry-based innovations. While not all of these may come to fruition, I think it's safe to say that 2019 will be a year of some breathtaking innovations with the usage of AI.